Intellectual property controversies in the media
The news media deals almost exclusively in the exchange of information, so it makes perfect sense that the media has crossed various legal and ethical lines involving intellectual property. Sometimes these transgressions are unintentional, while in other cases journalists knowingly break laws or defy ethical standards to get the lead, quote or story of their dreams. Copyright Infringement News media corporations have been accused of copyright infringement on multiple occasions. Many media corporations maintain powerful legal teams to protect their assets in the case that they unintentionally (or otherwise) violate intellectual property laws. In 2006, Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor filed a cease and desist against Fox News Channel for using three of his songs in a World War II documentary without his permission. Notably, Reznor has since released select Nine Inch Nails studio tracks under the Creative Commons license, allowing fans to remix his work and upload it to a community remix site. Fox News found themselves on the opposite end of infringement allegations in 2013, however, when they sued internet radio and television service TVEyes for hosting Fox News content "without permission or compensation." ZeeNews, India's largest news network with over 140 million viewers, was banned by YouTube following "multiple third-party notifications of copyright infringment." The ten-channel corporation was fully terminated, rather than suspended, and will likely never be permitted to post on the site again. North Jersey Media Group, publisher of the Bergen Record and Herald News newspapers, sued vice presidential hopeful and former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin for using one of their photos without permission. The suit was filed after Palin failed to respond to requests to remove the photo, which depicted firefighters working on 9/11, from her SuperPAC's website. Information Acquisition Not all intellectual property controversies in the media involve copyright infringement. As information itself is essentially intellectual property, it is important to consider notable cases in which journalists have acquired information through unethical or illegal means. The Cinncinati Enquirer shocked its readers when it issued a front-page apology to Chiquita Brands International, Inc. in the summer of 1998. The Enquirer had published an 18-page special on May 3, revealing alleged criminal practices by Chiquita, including their suppression of agricultural unions on company-owned farms, and hiring armed thugs to capture an employee of a competing company. While the world arguably had a right to know about this criminal behavior, the revelatory articles were partially based on 2,000 internal voicemails illegally taken from a "high-ranking Chiquita executive." The Enquirer settled the case out of court by awarding $10 million to Chiquita. While their techniques weren't illegal, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward partook in some less-than-ethical -- although justifiable -- information gathering during their investigation of the Nixon Watergate scandal. The duo questioned grand jurors, knowing they were sworn to secrecy, and in other cases outright begged sources for interviews. There is, of course, a fine line between persistance and journalistically unethical conduct, but in this case the two reporters may have crossed it. Whistleblowing and Journalism Professional journalists and news media entities have often served as a mouthpiece to whistleblowers, just as Woodward and Bernstein helped publicize information offered by former deputy director of the FBI William Mark Felt, Sr., known at the time as Deep Throat. The most famous case of whistleblowing in the past year and a half was that of Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who exposed the agency's potentially unconstitutional activity in June of 2013. His leaks were considered an act of treason by the U.S., leading Snowden to ultimately take asylum in Russia. Snowden turned to Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill to disseminate the information. Although Greenwald and MacAskill committed no illegal act by publishing Snowden's leaks, the journalists and their colleagues still found themselves subject to harrassment, including unwarranted searches and detainment at international borders. The Snowden leaks are a good example of potential backlash over high-priority information exchange, even if the exchange is legal.